Jonathan’s number 1 tip to grow a big business fast…
This one point I’m about to make might be one of the biggest reasons why you never successfully grow your company into a big business. I’ve had to learn this one for myself because this one comes from experience. If you’re an individual that is willing to work really hard, that grew up believing that hard work will move you forward in life, and you believe and pride yourself in a really strong work ethic. If you feel that you’re not too good to do any task inside the business, that nothing’s below you, that you’re willing to do it all, you’re willing to learn it all, you’re willing to be the best…that can get you into a lot of trouble because the most important skill that you and I have to cultivate as we build bigger companies, and I’ve learned this first hand, is you have to turn into an individual that manages and delegates and coaches and trains.
You can no longer be the person doing the work. In fact, if you want to build the best business possible, you really should do virtually zero work. That doesn’t mean that you don’t do work. What I mean is you’re now in a strategizing, planning, getting the bottlenecks out of the way of the team, coaching and training and organizing type role. You’re in the role of bringing the very best players to the team and putting them in the right spot in the company so that they can move the company forward. You shouldn’t be doing the marketing. You shouldn’t be paying the bills. You shouldn’t be mowing the lawn. You shouldn’t be filing. You shouldn’t be doing anything like that. You should be setting the goals, and you should be creating the company structure and putting the right people in place.
If you’re that person that feels guilt when you’re not working and doing the activity, if you feel guilt when you feel that you’re not working hard, if you’re not really doing the thing and you’re spending more of your time thinking, if you don’t think that thinking and strategizing and planning is work, then you’re going to feel guilty. You will not move your company in the right direction because you’ll never act in the role that you need to act to get your company to the next level.
You and I almost need to reprogram ourselves to believe that delegation is the right thing to do, and not feel guilt around actually doing the activity. If you look at all the most successful biggest business owners, this is the role that they’ve moved themselves into. You never see them actually doing the work themselves. Even if they might be the best at that task, they have handed it off to somebody else.
I’d argue that once you start to build up some money in your business, there’s almost nothing that you could possibly be the best at or you couldn’t hire somebody else to do it just as good as you. If you have enough money, you can always find somebody to do whatever you’re capable of, as good or better than you.
